what is the technical reason why no current version of GNOME runs on macOS?

[Bill Cole]

On 16 Apr 2021, at 8:35, Evelyn Pereira Souza via macports-users wrote:

> On 16.04.21 14:13, Ben Greenfield wrote:
>> Can you clarify?
>>
>>
>> https://trac.macports.org/wiki/GNOMEPackageStatus

Note that wiki pages are inherently unreliable, as they are maintained 
manually by whoever feels like updating them when the whim strikes them. 
As the history of that page shows, it had about 8 weeks of interest from 
one person who is also the maintainer of most of the GNOME ports, back 
in 2009.

> Quote:
>
> gnome-desktop
> 2.26.3
>
> Some days ago GNOME 4 was released. This very old release.

Yes, but that only shows that it is from a very old wiki page.

A check on a current MacPorts installation provides the actual truth:

# port info gnome-desktop
gnome-desktop @3.38.1 (gnome)
Variants:             universal

Description:          gnome-desktop contains the libgnome-desktop 
library as
                       well as a data file that exports the GNOME 
version to
                       the Settings Details panel. The libgnome-desktop
                       library provides API shared by several 
applications on
                       the desktop, but that cannot live in the platform 
for
                       various reasons. Documentation for the API is 
available
                       with gtk-doc.
Homepage:             https://www.gnome.org/

Extract Dependencies: xz
Build Dependencies:   meson, ninja, pkgconfig, itstool, gtk-doc
Library Dependencies: desktop-file-utils, fontconfig, 
gobject-introspection,
                       gsettings-desktop-schemas, gtk3, iso-codes,
                       xorg-libX11, xorg-libXext, xorg-libXrandr,
                       xkeyboard-config
Platforms:            darwin
License:              LGPL-2+
Maintainers:          Email: devans at macports.org, GitHub: dbevans
                       Policy: openmaintainer


-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire